live’n’loud: Ad­ven­tures in the arts

Students are urged to get cre­ative and em­brace chal­lenges of in­dus­try, writes
Rose Sadleir

M ATTHEW Haynes is on a mis­sion to open minds and in­spire cre­ative schol­ars.

The Sun­shine Coast graphic de­signer, who launched the Ana­logue/Dig­i­tal Cre­ative Con­fer­ence in 2010, says he wants to see cre­ative students em­brace cre­ative think­ing.

Haynes be­lieves Queens­land univer­sity students are be­ing left in the dark. He says they are not sat­u­rated by the thoughts and views of cre­ative mas­ter­minds and do not have an un­der­stand­ing of job prospects in their fu­ture in­dus­try.

The A/D con­fer­ence, which ar­rives on the Gold Coast this week­end, will see a range of speak­ers in­clud­ing famed artist An­thony Lis­ter and in­sight­ful cre­ative di­rec­tor Christo­pher Doyle share their observations and per­cep­tions of the cre­ative in­dus­try.

Haynes says he en­cour­ages those who at­tend to dream and not to rely on any­one else to achieve their dreams.

‘‘Out of the thou­sands of peo­ple who are study­ing some­thing cre­ative, only 10 will get good jobs,’’ he says.

‘‘We don’t dumb it down. Those 10 peo­ple ei­ther know peo­ple or are su­per tal­ented. I give them hard facts. As soon as I tell them I know how to get those jobs they lis­ten pretty quickly.’’